Conflict and Security

-An article on Michel Houellebecq’s Soumission and a changing France- Paris, the night of the 6th of January 2015. Michel Houellebecq, enfant-terrible of the French literary world, is sitting in his hotel room in expectation of something big to happen. In the past months Houellebecq has locked himself up in his house on the Réunion Islands in order to work ... Read More »

  Ask yourself for a moment who are the closest people to you. To whom do you go when you need a warm embrace, an encouraging voice and a loving place to return after a long day? Did you think perhaps of your family…maybe your lover? It is amazing how a few words can make you think of your most ... Read More »

‘’What greater punishment is there than life when you’ve lost everything that made it worth living?’’, Shakespeare wrote in his play Romeo and Juliet. These thoughts must have crossed more than once the mind of Mr Kim, the protagonist of this story. Mr. Kim was a Korean citizen that suffered from the Japanese rule over his native country from 1910 ... Read More »

“There has been a vicious terrorist attack in Ankara Train Station at 10:04 am on 10th of October. This attack is an atrocity against the Turkish Republic.”  Turkish President, Tayyip Erdoğan. “We saw flags and pieces of bodies flying into the air. People were injured and running around unconsciously (..) I will never forget the smell of burned human flesh” ... Read More »

When I heard the breaking news about a bombing of a hospital in Kunduz yesterday, I immediately thought of a suicide bombing, of an “act of terror” how it is phrased too often. The fact, that the attack most likely was conducted by the US military did not change my disgust for this happening, but when I found out that it was ... Read More »

What is going on in Turkey? I mean, what is actually going on? Our newspapers have been filled with stories of specific events: fragmented but somehow related. Yet, a holistic view of the situation in Turkey is somewhat lacking. This article seeks to create a holistic view, which may not be complete, or perfect, but will allow the readers to ... Read More »

I had the pleasure of watching the documentary Searching for Sugar Man last week. A movie that focuses on the life of the biggest rock icon America has never had. Despite a promising start of his career, his first albums flopped and he dropped out of the music business. But through a most ironic twist of fate he ended up becoming a ... Read More »

There is an endless war in the Middle East. Soldiers, whether paid or not, professionally trained or freedom fighters, are risking their lives on the bloody battlefield to fight the terrorist group ISIS. Men and women, native and foreigners, are collaborating to end the ISIS land occupation in the cities of Syria and Iraq. How does it feel to leave ... Read More »

The popularity of TV series about (fictional) political worlds is thriving. This hasn’t gone unnoticed by IR scholars. The acclaimed IR journal Foreign Affairs has published analyzations of the political ins and outs of the TV shows like Homeland and Boardwalk Empire. However, the one most discussed TV series is Game of Thrones. One could say an IR debate is ... Read More »

On the 29th of August 2015, Hungary finalised the first phase of its initial plan of building a wall. The establishment of barbed wires along the 175km of land that separates the hungarian territory from its neighbour Serbia, was achieved in a remarquably short amount of time. Indeed, at the end of june of this same year, the Hungarian minister ... Read More »